For the first time in my spectacular (ahem) writing career, one of my books is being translated into a foreign language. And to my surprise, it’s not in the usual suspects for an Irish novel – France, Germany, Italy – but the far-off, exotic climes of…Brazil.

Shiver the Whole Night Through has been bought/optioned/whatever-the-term-is by a publisher called Bertrand, which is part of the huge Record group. My humble tome will be joining the illustrious likes of the legendary Terry Pratchett, my fellow Irishman John Connolly and my fellow Hot Key man Edward Carey on their Young Adult list.

I don’t have a publication date as yet, but I’m still ridiculously excited about all this. Brazil! Shiver in Portuguese! Hopefully they’ll invite me down there for a big fancy launch party on a sun-kissed beach somewhere…

This is actually about 6,000 words, hence the caveat “short(ish)”. It’s set in 2002, and tells the story of two best friends, a tiny girl and tall boy, who dress like Goths, are sweet-natured and studious, withdrawn though not troublesome, and spend all their time together. This naturally draws the malicious attention of other students. For three years they’re maligned and harassed; for three years they basically ignore it. Then one day, for no conscious reason, they begin to respond by throwing out random song lyrics, plucked from the ether. And the bullies don’t know how to react…

I’m quite fond of this story. I have real affection for the main characters – if my kids turned out like that, I’d be fairly happy – not to mention the songs they reference. I’m also (he said humbly) rather smug about the unusual structure: the story is told by two narrators simultaneously, in a sort of “address” to the world, at some unspecified later date. I’m not sure what you’d call that style of narration: first-person plural?

Anyway, enjoy.

(PS I’ve included a lot of real song lyrics in this story – trusting the musicians involved will indulge me in using them…)

The honest testament of Weird and Weirder – freaks, social outcasts and notorious gruesome twosome

THIS is our experience; this is our small testament to whoever cares to read it.

We were known by various names: The Freaks, Weird and Weirder, Dracula and Vampirella, The Cureheads (though neither of us ever wore their hair in a Curehead style), Fag and Fag-hag, The Gruesome Twosome. Childish or spiteful or amusing or just plain inaccurate. Our real names were Canice (his) and Robin (hers), if anyone had bothered asking. Of course our classmates knew them – they heard teachers address us by our given names, they saw them in lists on the notice-board – but nobody, excepting teachers and our parents, ever used them. Little first years, on asking someone older who were the couple who wore black eyeliner and always hung around together, would be told to run over to where we sat on the grass and yell, ‘Hey, Freaks!’ at us. We never made any effort to react; we never even looked their way. We stayed within ourselves.

Ah, yes – we always hung around together and stayed within ourselves, and there lay part of the problem. The great thoughtcrime of those happily mindless years. The desire which must not be countenanced, never mind acted upon. The love for solitude that dare not speak its name within the scrubbed corridors and musty cloakrooms of conformity. To ignore the fatuous rituals of adolescence and eschew acquiescence to an accepted, but never investigated, norm. To ‘just say no’ to discussions about TV shows and make-up, about sports and applying for a provisional driving licence. To refuse to engage in hypocritical debates about which girl was ‘easy’ and which was ‘frigid’ (the laughable use of a term barely comprehended), in round-table bragging about conquests and the nature of conquests and the sordid details of indiscriminate conquests. To want something grander, something otherworldly, something opposed to the sapping mundanity of the mainstream.

Because we chose, sometime in our early teens, each other’s company over the conversational static of our peers, we were marked down as difficult, different, someone to be watched.

It should be stressed that the school’s figures of authority never had any problems with either of us. We were courteous to teachers, we always presented homework on time, we smiled respectfully at the principal when passing and were friendly to the janitor. Our parents, sporadically worried about our contentment and social development, would be reassured by school staff that we seemed like nice young people, really, reasonably level-headed underneath the kooky dress sense and idiosyncrasy and exclusivity from our peers. They could understand those concerns, naturally, but really there wasn’t that much to be concerned about. They grow out of these affectations, and we’ve seen nothing to suggest that they won’t turn out to be fine adults.

That was a semi-deliberate decision, to be mature, deferential to an extent, with adults. We wanted everyone to know that a teenager could be wilfully distinctive, eccentric even, without buying into all the clichés of the Troubled Youth: drug abuse, licentiousness, facial piercing and body art, a surly manner, half-assed rebellion against ‘authority’ through vandalism, any of that infantile bullshit. We didn’t especially want to ‘rebel’, anyway, or at least not until older and wiser, when it might have had some concrete results; we had no interest in illicit drugs (although both smoked cigarettes from time to time), and felt too young and emotionally unfinished for sexual encounters of any seriousness. We were enthusiastic, in a distracted way, about our futures, and did not feel like jeopardising that just to pay self-injurious lip service to someone else’s jaded iconography of individualism and revolt.

Ultimately, we had no desire to make a statement of any sort to parents and teachers and other adults. They had always been fair and obliging; they had indulged our little quirks and opaque, internalised relationship with each other, as long as we stayed within the limits of acceptable behaviour and didn’t neglect our studies and music lessons and familial obligations and such things. The grown-ups were alright; it was the kids who needed to be taught a few lessons.

We initially met on the first day of secondary school, corralled into the assembly hall with 150 equally nervous, skinny brats, cut adrift from the pacific moorings of primary school and floating unaccompanied over the alien topography of a less predictable place. The principal spoke with a sort of stuffy gentleness, assuring us that, while adjusting to such a different environment would not be easy, he felt confident that each and every one of us would settle into five enjoyable and profitable years of study and friendship and extracurricular advancement. It was the usual vaguely meaningless waffle, but we both appreciated his obvious sincerity.

The assembly wore the school uniform – navy sweater, blue shirt, navy tie and black shoes, with grey slacks for boys and a grey, calf-length skirt for girls – but Canice bore a string of reddish-brown love-beads tight around his neck, a gift from an aunt recently returned from a foreign holiday. With his shirt buttoned up, they were barely perceivable, peeking through against the white of his neck. Robin stood five or six places away, and glanced over from time to time, grinning and looking down at her feet. Canice eventually noticed that she wore boots, not shoes, with metal toecaps and gold-tipped laces, and smiled back. She slyly pointed to her left eye, its bottom lash inked in black mascara. He loosened his tie and began flicking at his necklace, a delicate movement which could be mistaken for light scratching. We both continued smiling.

Later we discovered that we had been streamed in many of the same classes: English, French, Religion, Science. In our first English class, the teacher, a beautiful fair-haired young woman from somewhere in the North, asked everyone to write a brief essay on a book they had enjoyed. Robin chose Swiss Family Robinson, saying she had admired the closeness of the family members, how they had helped each other in tough times. Canice said he had enjoyed reading Wuthering Heights, and another boy, a prematurely developed lunk with a thick neck and doleful eyes, laughed and shouted, ‘Ah ha ha, you poof, you like a girl’s book! You’ll get Aids, you poof! Wankers’ cramp!’ Robin whirled around and casually informed him that he was an idiot and didn’t even know what Aids meant. The teacher ordered him to stand in the corner but not before he was forced to admit that, yes, it was true: he did not know what Aids meant. It was something he had heard his father say about a person on television. We smiled at each other across the classroom and listened to the next child speak of their favourite book.

And there it was: we were friends, and stayed that way. As we got older – thirteen passing into fourteen into fifteen – we grew closer to one another and further from the rest. We each occupied an exclusive little bubble while in class, wherein we would politely engage with the teacher or, if absolutely necessary, fellow students, but always holding back, always detached. We passed every morning break and lunchtime in each other’s company, eating sandwiches or smoking a shared cigarette butt or sitting on the school’s outside wall, quietly chatting and watching the traffic hush by in a flurry of dust and litter. We walked to and from school together, rucksacks hoisted over one shoulder, discussing songs we liked or interesting magazine articles or ideas for killer movie scripts that had come to us the previous night; the usual silly kids’ stuff.

We called to one another’s houses most evenings, making dutiful small talk with parents before retiring to the sitting-room, where we would watch videos with the sound turned down and invent dialogue for the characters as we went along, or go upstairs and make compilation tapes and plaster the walls with posters of musicians and cult films and political posters which we never fully understood but found visually captivating. Sometimes we would take a stroll by a torpid stream which ran behind Robin’s house and stop some way down where a massive severed trunk made a natural seat for two; we would each then pull out a notebook and pencil and scribble poetry – shapeless, melodramatic stuff, really – and read our meisterworks to each other, secure in knowing that, despite recognising oneself that it was doggerel, the other would never denigrate and, especially, never tell anyone else. We were self-contained and impervious, and we would never tell.

If that had been the limit of things – two kids engrossed in each other, not needing or wanting the attentions of anyone else – we probably wouldn’t be writing this now. But human nature being what it is, and such small-minded, petrified little creatures we are, that our divergence from the inflexible median was bound to have unpleasant repercussions. Because people just can’t mind their own business and leave others be.

About three weeks into third year Canice was punched in the mouth by a classmate as they walked, changing classes, from one prefabricated building to another. He had come to school wearing some of Robin’s eyeliner on his right eye, inspired by the cover artwork of a copy of A Clockwork Orange which he had recently read, and garnered some stifled giggles and the odd menacing stare which lingered a fraction too long. This boy was called Rory and had never, to the best of our recollection, spoken to either of us prior to this moment. He seemed quiet and studious, even a little nerdy. He walked up behind Canice and swung a fist into his mouth, cutting the lower lip and loosening a tooth. He then stalked off, muttering, ‘That’s what you get, faggot.’ Canice didn’t report the incident to the principal – the all-pervading code of schoolyard omerta wasn’t broken by anyone, and we preferred to disregard things rather than make an issue out of them – but wiped the blood from his mouth and the kohl from his eye and went to class.

Later that week Robin was accosted by a group of fifth year girls in the toilets, who surrounded her in a corner, leaning their faces towards hers and slowly blowing smoke into her eyes. A heavyset girl with permed hair, obviously the ringleader, jabbed her forcefully on the chest with one finger and said, ‘Who do you think you are, coming to school with your eyes all painted up like that? She looks like a fucking panda, don’t she, girls? A little fucking panda! No animals allowed at this school, girl.’ Robin turned her face from them and stared out the window which looked down onto the lawns below. The janitor, a thin, florid man, was mowing the grass, his mower making an erratic drone. The heavy girl jabbed Robin again and was about to speak when the door swung open and several sixth years strode in, chatting and laughing and offering one another cigarettes. Robin slipped through the knot surrounding her and left.

That was the start of it, and though it became familiar and expected, we never quite got used to it. We wanted to be left alone, but were not; as simple and inescapable a fact as that. Canice grew his hair like the singer in a certain rock band, a short-back-and-sides topped with a voluminous, foppish fringe which fell over his eyes and halfway down his face, and had ‘Queer’ written all over his schoolbag in indelible marker. Robin got her nose pierced, a gorgeous, delicate diamond stud which was almost unnoticeable, and was reported to the principal for violation of the school dress code, but not before her books were stolen and sprinkled in pieces across the basketball court.

Canice bought a new bag and decorated it with painstaking recreations of the sleeve designs and logos of his favourite bands, and the bag was stolen and cut into shreds on one of the machines in the metalwork room. The shreds were then posted to his parents’ house, addressed to ‘Gayboy’. Robin spent four hours sifting through second-hand clothes shops for a full-length leather coat which was taken from the cloakroom on the first day she wore it to school and returned, two days later, minus the sleeves and with ‘Die U Fag-Hag Bitch’ scrawled on the back in Tipp-Ex. She wore the coat to school the next day anyway.

Robin was asked a question one day in Maths class and her answer was accompanied by muted catcalls of ‘slut’ and ‘freak’. The teacher, a lanky old gent who looked permanently depressed, reddened in the face and held up the class for fifteen minutes until the culprits identified themselves. He then wrote an angry note to their parents, asking them to refrain from sending such ignorant louts to school in future. Canice was sporadically beaten up, desultory punches, though never again on the face; his ribs ached and his arms were a patchwork of deep-purple bruises. Once, in the boys’ toilet between classes, he was kicked hard in the testicles, and doubled over in pain; his crime had been to make a brief defence of the rights of homosexuals in a discussion in religion class, which the teacher applauded but his peers obviously did not.

Anonymous letters were sent to both our parents, claiming that we had been having sexual intercourse, with each other and a myriad of disreputable local characters, since first year; that we were regular drug users and terrorised younger students; that we brought books on black magic and Satanism to school and tried to indoctrinate classmates in our wickedness. (That was partly true, though grossly exaggerated: Robin had purchased a beginner’s introduction to witchcraft and casually mentioned it in school one day.) Funnily, neither set of parents ever believed these accusations; they seemed to understand us fairly well, that we were quite innocent in our behaviour, that our friendship never strayed beyond that, and that we had neither the inclination nor the fitful, neurotic energy for drugs or animal sacrifice.

So it went for a year-and-a-half, a steady procession of jibes and property defacement and threats, spoken and implied, and intermittent bouts of violence, and we managed to stay at a distance from it, to feel the blows and flinch at the insults but remain enclosed in our private place, whether through practise or necessity or force of will, we didn’t really know. It seemed to enrage the wider populace even more that we rarely reacted, remaining unresponsive to their gauche stratagems of terrorisation. We both felt, in a weird way, that the ultimate aim of this abuse was not our ostracism, but rather its opposite: our inclusion into, and grateful acceptance of, their petty structures and worldview. Our indifference to these, and the fact that what we desired most was the privacy to be ourselves as we saw fit, seemed like a blatant, very public rejection of everyone else’s beliefs, both as individuals and as a collective.

We also noticed that it was the school’s lower castes, to use an apt phrase, the ugly and unintelligent and socially inept, who tended to attack us with most vitriol. This wasn’t like a hackneyed television show, in which the popular gang – the jock and cheerleader and bitchy fashionista and their coterie of hangers-on – are the bullies. The school’s top dogs had serious issues with our dress and attitudes, there was no doubt, but they seemed to lurk in the background, smug in the foreknowledge of an easy life of sexual adventuring and enduring adoration, sliding into respectable, ostentatious middle-age. We joked that they were like the orchestrators, the ideologues, of a peculiar kind of juvenile movement, pulling the strings of the great unwashed but always lingering on the fringes, as they waited to see what happened in a vaguely disinterested way.

One day in fifth year, as late winter gave way to spring and we both, already, started making plans for the summer ahead, events took a new turning. It wasn’t something planned or foreseeable; it just leaped out of the unconscious into our lives. Canice was strolling down the main corridor to meet Robin for morning break, dressed in that season’s fashion choice – black painted fingernails, a slim silver bracelet, heavy brown mascara and a huge school sweater with tears in the elbows and neck – when he was accosted by three or four of the usual suspects. The leader of the pack, a butty thing with spiked hair and a wispy approximation of a moustache, hopped in front of Canice, blocking his way. Canice moved to the side, his aggressor moved with him, and so on to the other side.

The guy just stood there, smiling stupidly, basking in the unfamiliar sensation of being the centre of attraction, as his friends skulked behind him, chuckling and swaying in that self-conscious adolescent way. Canice sighed to himself; he felt worn-out and didn’t want to keep Robin waiting. He moved to push past the boy but was halted by a hand on his chest; the boy grinned and said, ‘Gotta say the password, faggot. Come on. Givus the password.’ Canice scratched his head, gathering a flake of dried hairspray under his fingernail; he flicked it at the boy’s face and said, ‘Big girl with the sweet tooth watches the skinny girl in the photoshoot.’

It was a line from a song – he couldn’t remember which one at that moment – and had just popped into his mind from nowhere; the words were spoken before he fully realised what he was saying. The boy stared at him, mouth agape and with such a stupefied look of confusion on his face that it was almost endearing. Canice laughed, a stifled burst, and stepped around the group. The boy turned to his friends with a continuing expression of bewilderment, saying, ‘What the fuck did he mean by that?’

Ten minutes later, as we sat talking under a beech tree near the school’s front wall, two second year students, psyched-up and keen for some playground approbation, threw a tennis ball into our midst and hollered over, ‘Hey, Gruesome Twosome. Throw us our ball back, you clowns.’ Canice stood up wearily, catching the ball and raising his hand to return it, then stopped and thought for an instant; he flung it onto the road and turned to them, declaiming, ‘You had this way of talking, oh yeah, you said, “I’m gonna be a star.”’ The younger kids scrunched up their noses and looked at each other, perplexed, then shrugged their shoulders and scuttled off, already bored with the ball and the two outcasts and their incomprehensible ways.

We smiled at each other under that tree, smoking a cigarette each and gazing at a man changing a flat tyre across the road. One of the nuts was twisted in too tightly, and he was forced to jump down violently on the wheel-brace in an attempt to loosen it. He did this once, twice, then slipped on the third try and fell, soaking his suit trousers in a slurpy, muddy puddle. For a moment he glared at the mess, then shook his head and burst into laughter. We laughed too – it was so absurd and harmless.

We finished our cigarettes and returned to class – Honours English – taking our usual place in the top corner of the room. The sun flashed in the window on that side, a real hard, pure winter sun. The teacher began a discussion about the Romantic poets and touched on Byron’s incestuous relationship with his half-sister. From the middle of the room, a handsome boy called Seoirse, with bronzed skin and a vicious aspect to his smile, remarked, ‘Hey, does that remind anyone of two other space-cadets not a million miles from here?’ Everyone sniggered, and the sound was beginning to die down when Robin stood and spoke directly to Seoirse, saying, ‘There’s a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad.’

He stood as well, squaring his shoulders and cocking his head aggressively. He was well-built and menacing. He barked, ‘What did you say, Vampirella?’ The teacher pointed her finger at him and declared, ‘Sit down, Seoirse. Now.’ Canice sighed loudly and drawled, ‘She said, “You might live in a screen kiss, it’s a glamorous dream.”’

The light shone past our shoulders and Seoirse couldn’t see us properly; we were glowing silhouettes against a harsh blue background. He blinked into the sunshine and mumbled some sort of threat, then returned to his seat after a second command from the teacher. She turned to us and asked, ‘Robin? Have you something to say?’ Robin smiled sweetly and chirped, ‘No, miss. Sorry about the interruption, miss.’

After class we trooped out in the usual sheepish, deflated way and Canice was stopped in the corridor by a boy and girl, a couple whose longstanding relationship made them something of a rarity in school. They owned their own cars and holidayed together in Austrian ski lodges and were as insufferable as that would suggest. The boy put his hand on Canice’s shoulder and said, ‘I suppose you think you’re pretty funny, faggot.’

The boy slapped his cheek, not very hard, and said in a louder voice, ‘Hey. I’m talking to you, you fucking freak. I said you must think you’re funny.’

Robin stood on her booted toes, drawing herself up to her full five-foot-two height, and said softly, ‘I don’t understand why I sleep all day, and I start to complain when there’s no rain.’

The boy looked around, grinning, and lifted his hands in the air as if to say, ‘Look at this. What can you do with people like this?’, then dragged his girlfriend by the hand towards the front door. Canice hollered after him: ‘Crashing headlong into the heartland like a cannon in the rain, baby!’ We put our arms around each other’s waists and laughed uproariously, while a few students walked round us warily and a few others whispered among themselves.

A few weeks later Robin walked into the Science lab and saw ‘Robin is a filthy slag’ chalked on the blackboard in fat geometric letters. She looked at the rows of people sitting at their benches, smirking and darting glances at each other behind fitted Bunsen burners. She put her bag down, rubbed the board clean and wrote ‘Sitting here like wet ashes with X’s in my eyes and drawing flies’ in a large script, then added a postscript: ‘Signed, Robin, the filthy slag.’

We continued to repeatedly reply in this way and it was strange, this new power we seemed to have, merely by choosing a path of controlled absurdity. This was a new paradigm, neither indifference nor angry retort, and people seemed at a loss as to how they should react. The self-confident kids offered it as proof of our limitless oddness and encouraged others to ignore this idiocy. A few individualistic sorts broke the habit of a five-year life-cycle and quoted back, little snippets of song lyrics or movie dialogue or poetry or self-invented gobbledegook. We didn’t respond in any particular way, but we didn’t ignore it outright. If they wanted to speak with us, that was fine, whether through conversation or something a little less conventional.

For many, though, our responses merely drove their antipathy to new heights: Canice was attacked in the toilets one dead afternoon by a group of five third years who had decided to ‘teach this queer a lesson’. They forced his head into the urinal until he retched on the sickly-sweet ammoniac stench of piss and urinal balls.

One shouted, ‘Whatcha got to say now, huh?’

Canice muttered, ‘You know I took the poison from the poison stream, and I floated out of here.’

They looked at each other in slow unison, then forced his head down again as his hands scrabbled behind him, reaching for purchase on their jackets and trouser legs and that sweaty place’s slick walls.

‘Whatcha got to say now?’

‘I think last night you were driving circles around me.’

‘I said, whatcha got to say now?’

‘Kissing like a bandit stealing time, underneath the sycamore tree.’

‘Whatcha gotta say now!?’

‘All my friends are Indians, all my friends are brown and red.’

‘Whatchagoddasaynow!!??’

‘I saw a film today, oh boy, the English army had just won the war.’

Fifth year turned into Leaving Certificate after a lovely summer of camping trips with parents and part-time jobs mowing lawns and hanging out on hot dusty pavements, sucking on ice-pops and reading imported American comic books and discussing college plans. Robin half-wanted to study pure Chemistry; Canice was undecided, and thought he might take a year off to have a proper think about it. He had grown a lot over the past four months, a voracious spurt that saw him touch six foot by his seventeenth birthday in June. Robin remained dark and petite with a round face and probing brown eyes. We looked an even odder couple now, walking with arms linked and swinging our bags in the evening air: a lanky fellow with messy hair and a short girl with ink-black Pocahontas plaits and raggedy flares.

Robin went to visit a cousin in Galway towards the end of August, and Canice killed the time by reading his parents’ books, drinking tea with his mother, watching cheesy movies on video and painting a mural on his bedroom wall, a mishmash of Soviet propaganda images copied from a book he’d borrowed from the library. It didn’t have an especial political resonance, he just liked the look of the work: monstrous silver-black machinery and impassive blonde peasants, Lenin’s strident arm reaching out to address the millions.

We returned to school for those quickening last nine months before release into new, unknown places. The other kids seemed to have developed also during the break; they were bigger and more serious of aspect, settling into a strict routine of study and revision, fretting about university applications and seminal life choices. They seemed more like adults-in-waiting than the spiteful children who had left the previous June, and we were left pretty much alone. We put our heads down, like them, and worked systematically towards our futures.

On one occasion, nearing the Christmas holidays, Seoirse made an unkind comment to Robin during a History class discussion on the English Civil War. The teacher had asked us to imagine what today’s world would be like if Cromwell’s Roundheads came to power, enflamed with their narcotic visions of purity and restriction, the cauterising power of devotion to God. Seoirse snorted and looked at Robin, saying quietly, ‘You’d be hung for a devil anyway, you bitch.’ The teacher had turned to the blackboard and didn’t hear him speak.

Robin moved her lips as if to reply, then stopped, a little thoughtful. She turned to Canice and smiled, a huge beam that took over most of her face, and said, ‘Hey, handsome. Wanna come round to my house to study later on?’ He smiled back and nodded acceptance. Seoirse stared at her with a look that was half stunned rage, half frustration, and the curious thought occurred to Canice that Seoirse was partly in love with Robin. A thwarted love, something he had denied to himself, losing sight of its truth and eventually forgetting it ever existed. He’s like a latent homosexual overcompensating through rampant homophobia, Canice thought; he’s small and scared and hates himself, and he’s killing himself because of it. He felt some pity, but no empathy, for Seoirse; he felt detached from the boy’s problems, rising above such things; they were fading from view like horses fleeing over distant hills, becoming smaller and further and less and less real, until they ceased to matter at all.

Canice was dragged from his reverie by the sound of a chair scraping. Seoirse had stood up, red-faced and breathless; he was about to speak when someone muttered, from the back of the class, ‘Ah, sit the fuck down, will you?’ He paused, bent over like a parody of an infirm old man; then another voice, from his right: ‘Yeah, give it a rest, will you? Shut up for once.’ Seoirse seemed to actually deflate, sapped of energy; he resumed his seat, blushing, and stared down at his textbook.

The discussion recommenced and a freckly, fat-faced girl, sitting in the corner, declared, ‘I think they’d take away our rights, you know? Our right to do whatever we wanted.’ People mm-ed and uh-huhed in agreement as the teacher nodded earnestly, and then a good-looking guy with a prominent Adam’s apple said, ‘Yeah, I mean, they wouldn’t allow us to be who we wanted to be, would they? They’d force us to be someone we weren’t.’ And so on, in this unfocused way, until the bell went for the end of class. We laughed in bemusement at this new, caring side to our classmates’ personalities, and returned to our late nights with books and study planners and each other’s company.

Time passes more quickly as you approach the end of a specific period, and the following summer and impending exams sort of reared up on everyone from over the crest of some temporal dip and rise in the road. About a month before the first sitting – English, morning and afternoon – Robin told Canice, in her candid, soft-spoken way, that she had met a boy on a weekend trip, a friend of her cousin, whom she liked very much. Nothing physical had happened between them but he had given her his address and asked her to write. His name was Peter and he was sweet-natured and bright and didn’t sneer at her or try to shove his hand up her top. He was a true gentleman, and Robin would like to see him again if that was okay. Canice touched her arm and ensured her that, of course, he would have no problem with that; we were friends, and surely the first obligation of that was to desire happiness for one’s friend?

And genuinely, he didn’t mind; he wasn’t jealous because neither of us had ever thought of the other in anything but a platonic way. But he knew, in some part of the mind that offers a hazy, tantalising picture of the future, or potential futures, that our friendship was coming to its natural end; that we were becoming those fine upstanding folk our teachers had promised, and what existed between us was not made for an adult world. It belonged in the world of homework and uniforms and icy mornings and cruelty and burgeoning minds and imminent maturity and some intermittent moments of beauty and delight.

On the Friday afternoon after exams finished, the Leaving Cert class had a party in the assembly hall. Tables were laid with soft drinks and crisps and dips, balloons and streamers were hung from the painted walls, and a banner was strung from one corner to the other at the top of the hall. It read, ‘Farewell and Good Luck!’ Pop music played from discordant speakers and people stood around in loose clusters, babbling about how drained they were and what results they were anxious about and how they wanted to go outside for a sneaky smoke. We sat on the ground near the door, nodding disinterestedly at passers-by who said hello and laying our heads against the wall’s cool shadowed surface. Robin wore a medieval-style dress, dark-brown crushed velvet with flared sleeves; Canice wore a stretchy hair-band and tight t-shirt with a picture of a 1970s TV cop on the front. We didn’t notice anybody make a comment.

After about an hour the principal took the microphone, clearing his throat in that endearing, clumsy way, and began to speak with a definite choke of sentiment in his voice. He was a good man, we decided; he actually cared about his charges. He spoke about how people grow during their five years of secondary education, how these were some of the best years of one’s life, and entreated us to value our youth, to savour these days of exuberance and possibility and relative freedom. He received a warm round of applause on finishing.

People began handing out autograph books for classmates to sign, to put quirky messages and silly doodles on their unlined pages. We remained at a remove from this; we weren’t interested in anyone’s signature or florid sentimentality. The door drifted open on a rising breeze and a slice of light sneaked in, shining like a projector on the opposite wall. We stretched the kinks from our legs and were about to leave when a pair of students approached us, a diffident, studious pair whom we’d hardly noticed in the entire time we’d spent in that place. Her name was Bronagh and she was tallish with crazy corkscrew curls and soft features; he was called Eoin and had an angular face, slim shoulders and a stoical expression. They stood before us for a moment, as if waiting for the correct words to come.

Robin smiled and said, ‘Hi.’

The girl swallowed heavily and muttered, ‘Um…we’d like you to sign our book. The two of you. We’d like you to sign, if that’s okay.’

We looked at each other for a beat-and-a-half, then Robin sighed and put out her hand, saying, ‘Sure. If that’s what you want…’

Bronagh looked behind at everyone else, then back at us. She said, ‘Yeah. We’d like that, if it’s okay with you.’

Eoin leaned in, with this private, vaguely priestly air, and said in his strong accent, ‘We’re not bothered about the rest of them, really. Can’t see us keeping much contact with most of them afterwards, to be honest.’

We shrugged and laughed silently and nodded okay, and Bronagh handed over her book. It was a paperback of To Kill a Mockingbird; the pages were dog-eared with copious annotations in the margins. Robin held it up for Canice to see the cover and said, ‘Good book.’ Everyone nodded in agreement. Robin licked her thumb and opened it at the second leaf, writing directly underneath the title and author’s name for a minute or so.

She handed it to Canice, and he read what she had written: ‘If a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die…and if a ten-ton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine.’

He smiled warmly at her: it was the first line in the chorus of a song they both liked very much. He took the pen and wrote the next lines:

‘Oh there is a light and it never goes out,

‘there is a light and it never goes out,

‘there is a light and it never goes out,

‘there is a light and it never goes out…’

…six, seven, eight times. He grinned and handed it to Eoin, saying, ‘Your turn.’ Eoin repeated the line underneath in a blocky script, then passed on to Bronagh who slashed it across the bottom of the page in an unruly scrawl. We stood and stretched our backs and Canice opened the door behind us. Light flooded into the dimness of the hall; people blinked in our direction then turned away again.

Bronagh smiled self-consciously and said, ‘Thanks.’ We linked arms and said, simultaneously it seemed but that was probably just a trick of memory, ‘No problem. Take care’, and walked out the door together, arm-in-arm and with eyes closed against the brightness and warm breeze.

Robin put her head on Canice’s shoulder and snuggled into his neck, murmuring in a faraway voice, ‘So where to now, Weird?’ Canice shook his head and tickled her ear. ‘Dunno, Weirder. Let’s just potter along for a while and see how things end up.’ She whispered, ‘Sounds like a plan’, and we walked away, step by steady step, strolling calmly towards those new, unknown places.

Predicting things is a tricky business. I remember once trying to forecast which numbers would come up on a Las Vegas roulette wheel by channelling the ghost of Sammy Davis Jr and having him sing them, to a jazzy big-bang accompaniment. It didn’t work out so well, as the Vegas Mafia – and both my thumbs – will testify.

But what do you do when you fall off the horse? That’s right, you get back on the horse. So Imma throw caution to the wind and make my predictions for 2015, category by category:

Current affairs

My crystal ball is telling me there will definitely be an election this year. Oh, not in Ireland necessarily – but somewhere in the world, on some level of politics, someone will call an election. Probably. Clairvoyance is an inexact science. Also, Queen Elizabeth will celebrate becoming the longest-serving Royal ever by throwing a bangin’ party in Buck Palace. Music by Skrillex and industrial/noisenik icons Einstürzende Neubauten. Catering by Campbell’s Catering.

The Economy

Or as I prefer to call it, “the Ecomony” – makes me sound more “street” and “real”. Anyway, now that this blasted recession is over, I foresee nothing but sunshine and lemonade, financially speaking. I’ve already been onto the Bentley dealership, ordering five of their most expensive cars. The gas thing is, I can’t even drive! But hey, it’s only money.

Movies

The Hunger Games “franchise” will pull a fast one by splitting Mockingjay Part II into two further parts: Mockingjay Part 2½ and Mockingjay Part 2¾. They’ll then do the same thing in 2016, giving us Mockingjay Part 24/5 and Mockingjay Part 25/6. And they’ll continue doing this, dragging the absolute ass out of it forever and ever and ever. Coz there’s money to be made, see?

Music

Beyonce will make a radical change of direction with her new album, “The Songs of George Formby Reimagined as Though Being Played by a Ghost with a Kazoo”. This consists of Mrs -Z reimagining the songs of George Formby as though they were being played by a ghost with a kazoo. The video will be Beyonce crawling around in a fishnet onesie and being led on a dog-leash, while the word “Feminist” is lit up in neon, with nary a hint of embarrassment.

Sport

The relentless machine that is Kilkenny will win the hurling All-Ireland yet again, but Tipp, Clare or Cork will win the people’s hearts. And that’s more important in the end…he told himself with a strained air of desperation.

Telly

Kim Kardashian’s ass will get its own reality TV show, which will subsequently be cancelled due to low ratings – everyone realised that, if they wanted to watch a gigantic ass talk gibberish and be really irritating, they could just switch on the news whenever a politician is being interviewed. Also: yet another cop show will be made in which the villain is a smooth, sophisticated, unnaturally handsome serial killer. Because that’s what those guys were always like in reality, right?

Technology and Gadgets and That

In Back to the Future II, 2015 is the year Marty McFly arrives in. So I think we can assume the tech developments will be pretty much along the lines of what we saw in that film: flying cars, hovering skateboards, self-closing shoes, talking rubbish bins, dehydrated pizzas etc. And probably a bunch of clowns blithering on about whatever pointless new thing their smartphone can do – that’s fairly standard at this stage.

Social Trends

The bizarre new phenomenon called Slappy Selfing: a mixture of selfies and so-called “happy slapping”, except here the person will be hitting themselves, while filming it. And then uploading the results online. And possible doing all this for charity.

Celebrity

I’m seeing a Royal baby – perhaps one for Harry – either that or another Beckham baby – almost certainly carried and delivered by Victoria. I’m also seeing yet another Band Aid, this time organised for “sufferers of gimpy knees and also that annoying pain you sometimes get in your neck, you know, like if you’ve been sitting at the computer for a long time? Yeah, that one”.

Two more reviews of my YA novel Shiver the Whole Night Through – one from Irish newspaper The Sunday Business Post, t’other from an Australian online magazine for children’s books, Buzz Words.

I’m going to cheekily paste in the entire Biz Post review because their website is subscription-only and I don’t know if I’m popular enough that anyone could be bothered paying for a review of my book! But I have written for the paper on occasion in the past, so am trusting they will kindly indulge me…

“Darragh McManus brings an Irish flavour to the realm of supernatural teen fiction in Shiver the Whole Night Through. Set in a small town in the west of Ireland, its protagonist Aidan Flood is a benighted, bullied outcast, a punching bag to an “army of creeps and scobies and borderline psychos [who] would be locked up, in prison or the mental home, by the time they were thirty.” The opportunity for heroism comes in the most unlikely circumstances, as the apparent suicide of local beauty Slaine McAuley sets Aidan off on a quest to uncover the real details of her death. McManus paints an atmospheric picture of the rural locale, and the eerie forest, Shook Woods – the “Ground Zero for spookiness” – that lies at the heart of this mystery. A famine backstory adds subtext and texture to what might otherwise be Twilight-lite.”

And the Buzz Words review can be read here. Not only does the reviewer call the book “powerful”, they even see a movie adaptation. Which would be nice. Give me a holla, Hollywood…

This here review of Shiver the Whole Night Through is from Ian O’Doherty in the Irish Independent, the country’s biggest-sailing daily paper. And it’s a good ‘un: the famously hard-to-please Ian was, well, pleased.

(Declaration of interest: as a freelancer, the Indo is one of my various employers. No favours were asked or given, I assure you!)

There was a time when the trials and tribulations of adolescent life were merely seen as part of the occasionally painful process of growing up. The most exciting time of your life is also the most stressful and as the teenage suicide figures starkly demonstrate, killing yourself has somehow become an almost acceptable option for some members of a generation which seems depressingly incapable of processing disappointment.

So when we first meet 17-year-old Aidan Flood, standing atop a local bridge and preparing to hurl himself into the raging river below, we could easily have been meeting yet another teenage cliché.

Too bright for the suffocating constraints of small-town life, Flood is about to take his terminal step away from the bridge when a man walking his dog breaks his train of thought and, embarrassed, he steps down from the bridge and decides to postpone his own demise until another day. Flood’s close brush with being another statistic is placed in proper perspective the following morning when he learns of the mysterious death of a girl from his own town and, from that point, the reader is dragged into a compelling and sharply written Gothic love affair that manages to throw an intriguing light onto small-town Irish life and the nature of love, friendship and, crucially, trusting the people around you.

When the news emerges that 17-year-old Slaine McAuley has been found dead, having apparently killed herself in baffling circumstances, Flood finds himself drawn to the forbidding Shook Woods, a place of local lore and myth where her body was found. Filled with curiosity about the death of a girl he hardly knew, he is shocked one frosty night when, through the ice on his bedroom window, a mysterious force writes, ‘I didn’t kill myself’.

As our young hero recovers from the understandable shock of witnessing an apparently spectral force communicating with him through a window, McManus paints an increasingly intriguing picture of a young fella who is sufficiently self-aware to realise that either the dead girl really is reaching out to him, or he is simply losing his mind. Could these mysterious nocturnal missives simply be a sign of a teenage breakdown? After all, we soon learn of the traumatic and humiliating bullying he endured at the hands of the town moron and his anguish at how others simply joined in, leaving only his best friend standing by his side.

But when an extreme cold spell descends on the area – while the rest of the country remains untouched – and locals start to die in increasing numbers, it becomes clear that he is not going mad but has somehow become embroiled in a battle that stretches back to the famine times. As the newly dead Slaine becomes more accustomed to her state, she and the wary Flood begin a tentative teenage romance, full of anticipation and angst that is only made unusual by the fact that one of them is dead.

Did one of Slaine’s ancestors manage to summon an ancient Irish demon to help him during the worst of the famine? What are her motivations and why did she choose Flood, a boy she barely knew?

In the interests of transparency, it should be noted that McManus is a critic with the Irish Independent, but it’s not granting any workplace favours to state that this is one of the best Irish books of the year, regardless of the ‘young adult’ genre attached to it. It’s no surprise that it won a contract from a leading UK publisher in the genre.

The author wears his influences lightly, but even though they range from Stephen King to John Connolly, the voice of Aidan Flood, who emerges as a bright and decent kid whose self-esteem has been shredded by stupidity and malice, remains strong throughout.

As the dark and supernatural cold of the town worsens and Aidan and Slaine race against time to find a way to stop the malign influence from completely controlling the town, McManus touches on the nature of friendship and the social isolation that comes with being a victim of bullying, without ever turning Flood into a self-pitying stereotype.

McManus has written three previous novels, which were well-received. But Shiver The Whole Night Through announces an interesting new voice on the Irish literary landscape who has produced a novel which deserves to be read by every teenager this Christmas – and everyone who ever was one.

This article appeared in the Evening Herald last Saturday – I trust they won’t mind me putting it up here. It’s about the real-world locations that inspired Shiver the Whole Night Through…and where some of it was even written.

Creating a sense of place is hugely important in books; it grounds the narrative, establishes the fictional universe, enriches the whole thing. For my latest novel, Shiver the Whole Night Through, I took that to the next level in two ways: by making “place” essentially a character in its own right, and by using real locations as inspiration for the setting.

Second one first: my Young Adult novel is a noir-style mystery with a paranormal edge and elements of horror, fantasy and romance. It starts with 17-year-old bullying victim Aidan thinking of ending it all. He stays his hand, then hears that local beauty Sláine really has killed herself. One night a message forms in ice on his window: ‘I didn’t kill myself.’ Determined to discover the truth, Aidan is drawn into a dream-world of magic, terror, revenge and redemption, as the world turns ever-colder and an ancient evil threatens everyone.

The forest outside his small Atlantic Coast town is called Shook Woods – from the Irish “siochta”, for “frozen” (dramatic irony, as the area is soon engulfed in a weirdly extreme winter). The story for Shiver had been percolating in my mind for years, and was strongly inspired by real places I regularly visit.

First, a large Coillte plantation in Killanena, Co Clare, about seven miles from my home. Row after row of huge fir trees, almost military-formation in their straight lines. Something very spooky about it, almost intimidating, even during the day: hardly any light penetrates the massed ranks of trees. It was easy to imagine dark deeds and darker hearts dwelling within this endless twilight.

More forests nearby, of different size and aspect. Dromore Nature Reserve near Ennis, which reminded me how much other life is found in these places, besides the arboreal. Coole Park in Galway, famously the home of Lady Gregory and inspiration to Yeats, Synge and many others (yeah, I like to aim high artistically). Various forests I’ve known down the years in the Burren of North Clare.

And the Burren itself is so strange, otherworldly and beautiful that it couldn’t help filtering through. One scene in Shiver – when Aidan and Sláine first meet – takes place in a clearing within the woods, surrounded by straight-edged rock.

Take it away, Aidan: “The rock-face was cut sharply at both ends and stepped in shape, making the whole place resemble an ancient amphitheatre that’s been let return to nature. Like something they might visit in a TV show about the Greek islands.”

Indeed, so deeply did my actual location influence the book’s fictional locations that I ended up writing some of it in the forest. It sounds an awful cliché, I know – the author sitting in “deep” contemplation of sublime nature, or something.

I never used to believe those stories writers would tell. Nevertheless, in this case it’s all true. I’d park my car at Killanena, light a smoke, pour some coffee, stare out at the dark pines and then, after a while, start typing…

The other way in which a sense of place matters profoundly in Shiver is this: Shook Woods is a fundamental part of the story. As said already, it’s basically a character. It has a personality (which is spooky enough), it has agency (spookier still), it affects things and changes people (spookiest of all).

In some ways Shiver was my attempt at an Irish version of Twin Peaks, one of my all-time favourite works of art. And just as in David Lynch’s seminal drama, much of the pivotal action in Shiver takes place in the forest.

Without being too spoiler-ish: it’s where Sláine dies, her and Aidan meet, their relationship deepens, his whole view on life evolves. It’s also the source of all this murderous evil, and the stage for Shiver’s final reckoning.

More than that, I wanted (again like Twin Peaks) to capture the mood and atmosphere of the forest – any forest, all forests – and make them feel real, almost tangible to the reader. That unnerving sensation of dread and reverie and melancholy, which you can’t shake and don’t really want to.

I’ll let two of my characters explain it. One says: “I’d been searching for something my whole life, and somehow knew I would find it in this place… It’s the forest, I think. These black woods around us. The town itself is strange, there’s no doubting that. But the uncanny black heart of it lies in Shook Woods. It beats, that heart, it’s alive. This forest is alive, boy, in ways you could scarcely imagine. …They often are. Why do you think cautionary fairy-tales are usually set in the woods? That the highest concentration of serial killers in the United States is in the heavily forested North-West? It’s the place where our darkest selves are realised and revealed. Where the deepest melodrama of the human spirit is played out.”

And the second character thinks, “He was right, I reflected with dismayed horror. The woods were more than a collection of trees and wildlife: they were some kind of eerie dreamscape, a hellish netherworld into which I’d been drawn. Mysterious, ambivalent, unreal, yet strangely comforting too. The forest, I remember someone writing once, was everything those fairy-tales made you feel.”

Shiver the Whole Night Through, I hope, does that too. Makes you feel how the creepy, dreamy old fairy-tales did. But any success wouldn’t have been possible without the real-life woods around me. Source of nightmare and solace, an inspiration as deep as the black of a mid-forest night.

Buy my books! I need the money!

Shiver the Whole Night Through can be ordered here. And a tonne of other places too, online and real-world.
The Polka Dot Girl is still on sale at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Even Flow can be got at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk
Go on, they're all brilliant. And if you don't believe me, just look down there...

Praise for my work

SHIVER THE WHOLE NIGHT THROUGH

Best Young Adult Books of 2014, Daily Telegraph
Best Books of the Year, Booktopia
Book of the Month, Image Magazine, December 2014

“A dark, enjoyably gruesome read… McManus’s writing is fresh and pacy, but perhaps the best thing about his book is its powerful evocative of a freezing, snow-swept Irish town. Everything from the garlic chips to the slang feels sharply real, while the way in which local history relating to the Irish famine is blended with modern-day action makes for a satisfyingly layered mystery. The inclusion of an atmospheric Spotify playlist is an interesting bonus.” Daily Telegraph

“A compelling, sharply written Gothic love affair that throws an intriguing light onto small-town Irish life and the nature of love, friendship and, crucially, trusting the people around you… McManus paints an increasingly intriguing picture of a young fella who’s sufficiently self-aware to realise that either the dead girl really is reaching out to him, or he is losing his mind… This is one of the best Irish books of the year, regardless of the Young Adult genre…the voice of Aidan Flood, a bright and decent kid whose self-esteem has been shredded by stupidity and malice, remains strong throughout… A novel which deserves to be read by every teenager this Christmas – and everyone who ever was one.” Irish Independent

“The plot/story-line was fascinating and captivating… My favourite part of the book would have to be the final chapter, with its double jaw-dropping plot twist…and the reference at the end of the book to the title was marvellous.” Guardian

“Combining elements of classic noir detective stories and paranormal fantasy, Shiver the Whole Night Through is a haunting and utterly absorbing murder mystery with a supernatural twist.” Booktopia (Aus)

“A supernatural YA thriller that evokes teen years so well that those suffering them will nod while those of us past them will nod with recognition…a thrilling story that grips to the very end… Darragh McManus offers us his first YA novel – and it’s a scorcher. Not only does it cover murder (with an imaginatively killed body-count) and friendship on either side of the grave, there’s a non-slushy, bloke-friendly love story that doesn’t get in the way of the action…if you’re going to give this to a YA relative for Christmas, don’t read it first or you may just hang onto it for yourself.” thebookbag.co.uk

“Humiliated by his girlfriend and persecuted by bullies, Aidan Flood feels life is not worth living. He steps away from death, but his world is now filled with terror and violence, mystery and magic. His little Irish town is set to fall to evil, unless Aidan and Sláine – beautiful, enigmatic and undead – can stop them. I’m no young adult, but really enjoyed this. It’s full of tension and intrigue, and grips from the word go. It cleverly combines the supernatural with important teenage themes. Aidan is a good hero: cool, bright, real. You don’t want to stop reading. It’d be no surprise if this becomes a series – I hope so.” Irish News

“Darragh brings all the finesse of previous adult crime novels, paired with a unique younger voice, creating a thrilling murder mystery with a supernatural edge… Aidan is intelligent, witty and relatable. There are some pretty heavy themes of suicide and bullying, but these darker aspects make it real and compelling. The town has a backstory that’s downright scary, giving a glimpse of the mythical Ireland I love. As a standalone novel it works perfectly well but that’s not to say I don’t want more – there’s a lot more to come in Aidan and Sláine’s story.” Requiem for Readers

“I didn’t particularly like Aidan or have a lot of sympathy for him, but that’s not necessarily bad; it made him more interesting and more believable. He has a best friend, and I liked how their relationship plays out; their conversations were very realistic. Sláine’s a really cool character: complex, interesting, strong… The plot becomes quite surprising towards the end. I thought I’d figured it out, but it took another turn… I read this quickly because I really wanted to know what was going on with the mystery at its centre. Mostly I loved the Irish setting, the type of characters, the relationship between Aidan and his family. There’s also a little Irish history, which is right up my street. Lots of contemporary cultural references, paired with this old, mythical Ireland of ice and snow and the supernatural, which was really nice. A really interesting book, it held my attention the whole way through. Thoroughly recommended.” Candysomething, YouTube vlogger

“I teach teenagers, and had such empathy and understanding for Aidan as a lost boy; clever and sensitive, honest, struggling to be the man the world expects him to be. I saw him as real and genuine, therefore went with the supernatural elements of the story and certainly enjoyed it. Secondary characters were also three-dimensional, particularly Podsy who reminded me of friends I had. The heroine, ethereal Sláine, was equally layered – much more complex than I anticipated. As with YA fiction there’s a great thundering plot and explosive climax, but McManus never loses touch with the characters and we never lose empathy for them. I’ve read all McManus’ fiction and this is by far the best!” goodreads.com

“From the first page, I was completely absorbed…Darragh McManus has captured a unique and real-feeling voice (and) Aidan felt like a very realistic person. I really enjoyed how the plot progressed; lots of great foreshadowing and hints as to what was coming. Overall I really enjoyed Shiver The Whole Night Through. I was well and truly hooked…a brilliant read for those who want to curl up with a thrilling and chilly story.” The Bibliomaniac

“Aidan has become a victim of the schoolyard jungle, subject to physical, verbal and cyber abuse…the reader cannot help but sympathise with his hideous situation and hope things change. The book also explores the notion of revenge and, given readers’ sympathy for Aidan, invites us to consider the morality of such actions. The story is not without light-hearted moments; Aidan's sometimes black sense of humour provides relief from the intensity of the plot. This is Darragh's first Young Adult book and would have appeal for disciples of this genre.” Read Plus

“A total must-buy, must-read. I would have given the novel much more than five stars if I could have. This is one of the best supernatural stories I have read. I was deeply touched by Aidan Flood: bullied at school, leading him to want to take his own life. Teens and adults will fly through pages. I highly recommend Shiver to all readers; this is a fabulous novel to buy for someone.” ireadnovels.wordpress.com

“Dark and eerie, this is the perfect noir read.” Woman’s Way

“Darragh McManus brings an Irish flavour to supernatural teen fiction in Shiver the Whole Night Through. (He) paints an atmospheric picture of the rural locale, and the eerie forest, Shook Woods – the ‘Ground Zero for spookiness’ – that lies at the heart of this mystery. A famine backstory adds subtext and texture.” Sunday Business Post

“Wow, what a powerful book. The story is a little dark and ‘edge of seat’. The first chapter had me wondering just what I had picked up (but) I soon discovered I couldn’t put it down…I read late into the night. His writing transported me to a very unnerving place in Ireland… The story touches on Irish history and folklore, and has some very surprising twists. If read in a classroom it would raise healthy discussion; I found it thought provoking on serious matters like suicide, bullying, revenge. Characters are fully formed and support the main character well. The story gives room for sequels and I’m sure each would be enjoyable – in fact, I see a movie.” Buzz Words Magazine

THE POLKA DOT GIRL
“McManus has created a fascinating, and richly detailed, alternate all-female universe; you are well into the gripping mystery before you realise there are no men…Eugenie Auf der Maur is a brilliantly evoked amalgam of pulp heroes such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, all hardboiled attitude and wisecracking lip…It’s a brilliant idea and McManus carries it off with style.” Irish Independent

“In a genre dominated by men, and the femmes fatale who existentially torture them, McManus has chosen to make women the sole gender in his latest mystery…(he) has the lingo and tempo down pat…a great touch when it comes to the rhythmic development of pursuit scenes, an edge-of-your-seat narration that really moves the story along…there’s a cinematic vibe that is well-wrought and a subtle comic tone that works well: when we do find out whodunit, it comes with a chuckle, which, after all the heart-racing and heartache that came before, is a nice touch.” Evening Herald

“Fantastic set-up…normal hardboiled detective setting – the difference is, this is an all-woman cast…very tapped into that Chandler/Hammett style…also brings in elements of classical mythology…Genie is quite endearingly vulnerable…(the book is) a very interesting and intriguing addition to the genre.” Arena, RTE Radio 1

“With prose that mimics the style of Chandler and Hamnett, McManus produces a nice double-play: a satire on the masculinist tropes of hardboiled crime fiction at the same time as being an enjoyable hardboiled tale. The story itself rattles along a fair clip with plenty of tension and twists and feints, the dialogue is spot-on and there are some nice observational touches…an interesting and entertaining story that spins a unique take on the genre and is a must for those who enjoy their crime fiction with a satirical twist.” The View from the Blue House

“McManus has a wonderfully pronounced sense of quirk…this time he takes us to Hera, a woman-only city with no explanation as to its matriarchal status; it just is…ripples of subtle humour veining the pages…as a detective story I loved it…overall the experiment would make Raymond Chandler’s ghost proud due to the quality of the writing and the essence of the story itself.” thebookbag.co.uk

EVEN FLOW
“McManus’ novel has plenty of charm and humour, and raises rousing points about society… Disdain for misogynist yuppies steams off the page; the prose hisses and spits about the horror and injustices of the sex trade… In the end, like (Danny) Everard, you may not like everything here, but you’ve got to admire its guts.” Sunday Times

“With their literary obsessions and elegant attire, the 3W Gang are not your ordinary vigilantes...(they) like to be creative when meting out violence to their targets… It would be a rare reader indeed who doesn’t cheer when the tuxedo-clad vigilantes force the creeps out the window. …McManus is a good storyteller. Thanks to snappy, darkly funny prose and a willingness to move the plot along quickly, Even Flow is a consummate page-turner. It asks interesting questions about vigilantism and whether it can ever be justified. The 3W Gang is an intriguing creation – a sort of Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla unit for a new generation.” Irish Independent

“A great novel which makes the reader empathise with the enigmatic 3W gang... Darragh McManus is able to construct a well written and endearing yarn. The plot is well-executed and manages to illuminate all sides of the argument... Even Flow is a good story, and more than that it has an original execution that makes it worth the price of purchase...we were pleased with what we read and quickly grew to enjoy McManus’ turn of phrase.” So So Gay magazine

“The novel starts with a bang, with a man hanging from the top of a building. Quickly, the story picks up speed as the men crash a party to save a pair of prostitutes from something they hadn’t signed up for – and that’s just the first chapter… Dark but well-humoured, with a pace that will quicken your heart rate with each chapter.” Huffington Post

“Darragh McManus has written something just that little bit different…a highly entertaining thriller with one dimension more than some thrillers can boast… If you want to chill over a ripping read then Even Flow delivers as well as Lee Child; it’s just as action packed and atmospherically tense…(not) the sort of book you only read once.” thebookbag.co.uk

“A very well thought out and tightly woven novel…the reader will finish anxiously looking forward to Mr McManus’ next book…impossible to put down and well worth the read.” bookbitch.com

“A fantastic idea (for a book)…by the end of the second chapter it had completely grabbed me…you get opinions from every side, who all have reasons for their actions…absolutely gripping to the very end, very well-written…I really enjoyed this.” YouTube vlogger candysomething

“The dramatic opening scene sets the tone for a provocative crime thriller. Mixing influences as diverse as Don De Lillo and A Clockwork Orange with The Smiths and Pearl Jam into a cinematic stew, Even Flow centres on the 3W Gang’s unconventional tactics to promote their vision of a tolerant society. Evoking the clipped style of Elmore Leonard, Even Flow is marked by its filmic descriptions.” irishcentral.com

“(Even Flow) trips along with the pace of an indie flick, is peppered with emails, newspaper clippings, DIY cartoons, and zine pages, and tells the story of a gang who use viral videos, cult song-lyrics, Banksy-like murals and all the new communication technology available to them to advertise their deeds. Coming in at 200 fast-paced pages, Even Flow is a quick read…a short, sharp shock.” Gay Community News

“McManus’s book has some clever moments and the conceit is engaging...poses some interesting philosophical questions... There’s plenty of promise and it’ll be interesting to see what he produces later.” Sunday Business Post

“Even Flow is difficult to categorise...once it clicked into place the pages just flew-by. The second half of the story is especially strong as the action, dialogue and politics all get ratcheted-up, and it has a very nice noir ending...what makes this a fun and engaging read is the plot and politics. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes their noir to have a deeper message.” theviewfromthebluehouse.
blogspot.ie

“A startling reinvention of the genre…evocatively cinematic…remarkably vivid…the book is intelligent, quirky and thought-provoking…one can only hope this novel becomes the movie it is destined to be, and the author develops some of these characters into their own franchise. More please.” 5-star amazon.com reader review